The present invention relates generally to the electrical, electronic and computer arts, and, more particularly, to techniques for determining an object referenced within informal online communications.
A company may want to monitor online content in order to see the frequency with which it is discussed and/or the manner in which it is perceived. However, unlike a formal press release or news report, which purport to present an accurate statement of facts, informal online communications (e.g., chat, message boards, and/or social media) typically consist primarily of short segments of text which typically focus less on presenting facts accurately and more on presenting a personal opinion or commentary, often with the goal of being fresh, humorous, and/or dynamic. Analysis (e.g., data mining) of these informal communications accordingly presents unique challenges. Informal online communications often use words which may initially appear to refer to one concept but actually refer to another concept. The concepts to which words refer may be obscured. For example, rather than referring to a person by his or her actual name, informal online communications may instead refer to him or her using a nickname or other slang.
Conventional techniques for determining the concepts to which a given word refers often utilize a knowledge graph which analyzes the context within which a given word is used. For example, the word “apple” likely refers to a company when it appears with product names such as “iPhone” or “iPad” or with other company names such as “Microsoft” or “Google,” but likely refers to a fruit when it appears in conjunction with other fruit names such as “pear” or “orange” or with food-related terms such as “sauce” or “juice.” (The product names “iPhone” and “iPad” are registered trademarks, as are the company names “Apple,” “Microsoft,” and “Google.”) But informal online communications may not include sufficient contextual cues to permit the use of conventional knowledge graphs to determine the meaning of a given word.